Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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291. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the afforestation scheme is classed as an environmental scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51397/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Forestry Programme 2014-2020 (extended to end 2022) provides significant supports for afforestation scheme which contains measures aimed at protecting the environment and biodiversity.

All forestry licences issued must comply with the requirements of EU and national environmental law, environmental policy that falls within the scope of EU law, and the four environmental principles that inform those frameworks.

Although not an exclusive list this includes the Birds Directive, the Habitats Directive, the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, the Water Framework Directive, and the Dangerous Substances Directive, as well as the prevention principle.

This aims to prevent environmental damage rather than to react to it; and the rectification at source principle, which seeks to prevent pollution at its source rather than remedy its effects.

The Department's Land Types for Afforestation procedure (2017) and Environmental Requirements for Afforestation (2016) are significant in this regard, as together they exclude a wide range of sensitive sites and habitats (including non-designated Annex I habitats) from afforestation, and stipulate measures to include existing habitats and undisturbed setback on sites which are deemed eligible.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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292. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the meetings the Minister of State with responsibility for Land Use and Biodiversity had with banks in relation to forestry contractors; the banks they met with; the dates these meetings took place on; the outcomes of these meetings; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51398/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I can confirm that both myself and Minister of State Pippa Hackett have held meetings with bank officials in relation to forestry.

Minister Hackett met with officials from Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank and AIB in September 2020 and discussed, inter alia, cashflow for operators within the forestry sector.

I met with the CEO of AIB in October 2020 and the CEOs of Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank in November 2020. I raised the issue of temporary liquidity difficulties in the forestry sector and asked that credit demand from forestry contractors be examined in the context of the situation regarding licensing. 

The Irish forestry sector is a significant employer in rural Ireland of almost 12,000 jobs. I and Minister Hackett, who has overall responsibility for the sector, remain committed to supporting the sector and to addressing licensing issues.

We have a framework in place through Project Woodland to deal with the backlog of licences and we have invested significant time and resources in doing so. This is producing  results, with 585 licences issued in  September, the highest in any month since April 2019.  We will continue to work on sustaining  licence output for the benefit of all involved in the sector.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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293. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if applications submitted to the Forest Service are dealt with sequentially going by the TFL number allocated to each individual application; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51399/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Department assesses all forestry licence and scheme applications on their own merits and in combination with other plans and projects in the area.  The Deputy is aware of the backlog of forestry licences awaiting assessment and that the majority of these are referred to ecology.

Circular 08/2021 published last June, set out the work the Department had conducted to streamline the licence assessment process.  The Circular detailed the improvements had been made to the system, to optimise the ecologists’ time to concentrate on the ecological aspects of each application.  At the time of the Circular, the improvements that had been applied to private tree felling licence (TFL) applications with ecologists working mostly on these files in advance of the system being developed further to assist with forest road works and afforestation licence applications.

In relation to the tree felling licence applications on hand, the Department undertook a triage exercise to determine the quality of the supporting documentation submitted.  Resulting from this, a cohort of applications were deemed to be complete enough to enable the ecological assessment.  The remaining cases were communicated to the applicants or their registered foresters, detailing the issues involved.

Since then, the Department has been working through those complete applications and those for which the requested information has been received.  Ecologists are assigned applications on a county basis and within those they prioritise, taking the older applications first.  It may also be the case that two or more applications proximate to each other are assessed together, regardless of when they were received to ensure consistency.

I am pleased to report that this has been a very successful exercise and that we are now issuing an average of 115 new licences per week since the beginning of September. 

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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294. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of bilateral meetings he or his senior staff have had with the forestry industry in the past three to six months in connection to the CAP strategic plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51400/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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A consultation on the draft interventions of the CAP Strategic Plan which was conducted in August and September this year has been met with a lot of interest and the Department has received many submissions in response which are currently being examined.

Forest Industries Ireland (FII) made a submission containing proposals on the further integration of tree and forest planting initiatives.  

Bilateral meetings between the Department and FII have taken place on 17^thMay 2022 and 2^ndSeptember 2022 respectively. FII have followed-up on their submission with further detailed queries which are currently being considered by Department officials. 

The Department also presented to the COFORD Council on the same issues last week, as well of course as ongoing engagement with the CAP Consultative Committee.  

As outlined in the draft interventions that have been published by the Department, several tree planting measures have been proposed to be included in the CAP Strategic Plan. Due to the long-term nature of forestry, it is not proposed to include forest planting measures in the new CAP measures, but a separate Forestry Programme which will be the successor of the current Forestry Programme 2014-2020 (extended to end 2022) will be developed. 

The planting of trees has the potential to play a significant part in our environmental priorities especially water quality, biodiversity and climate.

I remain committed to integration between the new Forest Strategy and the next CSP to ensure that measures in both will complement each other and lead to increased levels of tree planting. 

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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295. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the percentage of forestry licence applications which are screened by his Department for appropriate assessments in the past 12 months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51401/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy will be aware of certain Court of Justice of the European Union decisions and their subsequent application in the High Court and other appeals bodies, pertaining to the environmental assessment of planning applications.

Forestry licences, that is afforestation, forest road works, aerial fertilisation and tree felling licences are considered planning applications. Therefore, the Department reflected on the CJEU decisions, which resulted in a change to the way forestry licence applications are assessed.

Prior to the decisions, mitigations could be included in the application. However, this is not now possible, which means many more applications are screened in for a comprehensive ecological assessment and approximately 80% of all forestry licences are now referred to our Ecology Unit. We now have 26 ecologists, whereas at the time of the CJEU decision we had one.